The novel is purportedly influenced by Marcel Camus's 1959 film Black Orpheus. The protagonist, Lo Lobey, is loosely based on the character of Orpheus, and the character of Kid Death is likewise based on Death in that film.

Algis Budrys, after noting that Delany "has about as little discipline as any writer who has tried his hand" at science fiction and that The Einstein Intersection was a book "whose structure and purpose on its own terms are not realized," declared that Delany "simply operates on a plane which Robert Heinlein never dreamed of, nor John W. Campbell, nor – take a deep breath – Ted Sturgeon, Ray Bradbury, nor anyone else we could have put forward as being a poet" before 1960 and "urgently recommended" the novel."[3]